The Cradle

He doesn’t care that he is out of cigarettes.
He no longer pays attention to t.v. reports
of massed tank columns and
dead students.
He has taken a length of twine and knotted it into a loop.
Oroborus, he whispers.

He deftly strings the fingers of both hands,
building patterns of angles,
fingers move together, then apart,
looping, releasing,
each time the pattern deepens.
He bites his lip, drawing blood
then spits once
twice
into the unlovely shape growing between his hands.
One sharp clap
and the ruddy drops are encased in string.

He is almost finished.
The cocoon suspended between his fingers
twitches once
twice.
Somewhere far away,
ripples spread from the center
of a ragged field of wheat.

He unwraps the moist, mewling
thing he’s made
and sets it down to grope with the others
in the filth around his chair.
On t.v. a reporter pretends to be disgusted
with the stained mattress the police found.
The weaver wishes he had a cigarette
as he reaches for another piece of string.

Ω

Jeff Jeppesen is an IT professional and writer living in Houston, Texas. His work has previously appeared in Potpourri,Strange Horizons and Everyday Poets. He has work soon to appear in Illumen.